Dima lost his mother, father and two grandparents in a missile attack on his village, Hroza, in northeastern Ukraine.
“I still don’t quite get the idea,” the 16-year-old teenager told the BBC.
“Now I am the head of the family,” he comments, adding: “the person I feel most sorry for is my younger sister. Before this happened she didn’t like me hugging her. Now she wants to hug me all the time.”
On October 5, 2023, a missile hit a cafe in Hroza and killed 59 people.
At least one member of each family in the village had come there to attend the funeral of Andriy Kozyr, a neighbor who had volunteered for the Ukrainian army.
A fifth of the population was killed and many had children, so Hroza is now known as a town full of orphans.
It is the deadliest incident for Ukrainian civilians since the full-scale invasion of Russia began two years ago.
Moscow has not commented on this attack, but its forces claimed to have carried out offensives against military targets in the region, according to Russian state media.
Ukraine assured that there were no military objectives there, something that supports a UN report according to which “there were no signs of military personnel or any other legitimate military objective.”
a broken family
Dima’s life before the war was like that of any other young man his age: he lived with his parents, went out with friends, talked on the phone often, and sometimes argued with his sisters.
Now he contemplates, in a cemetery on the outskirts of his town, the wreaths of flowers that cover the recent graves of his parents and paternal grandparents.
They still have no headstones, and in their place are wooden crosses with photographs of their smiling faces.
Hardly any visitors come here. The village of Dima, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, is very close to the Russian border and about 30 kilometers away, intense fighting is taking place around the city of Kupyansk.
Flowers abound in the Ukrainian national colors of blue and yellow, and the silence is broken only by the sound of explosions in the distance.
Devastated and grieving, Dima and his sisters asked their maternal grandparents, the only ones still alive, for help.
“Many people died because of the attack. Suddenly, the town was empty“says Valeriy, Dima’s grandfather, 62 years old.
“We will never forget that pain. We had four coffins in the house. My mind understands what happened, but my heart still can’t believe it,” she laments.
He shows me the last photo taken of his daughter Olga and her husband, Anatoliy. “They loved each other very much. It was a good home,” says Valeriy.
And remember that Anatoly once joked that if he died before Olga, she would quickly move on and remarry.
“But Olga said: ‘No, dear Anatoliy, we will die on the same day.’ It was like I had seen the future“says Valeriy, while rubbing his eyes to hold back tears.
The sexagenarian describes the aftermath of the October attack as “a fast-paced horror movie.”
He rushed to look for his daughter, but did not arrive in time. A woman who was with Olga when she died told her that her last words were “I want to continue living.”
Valeriy and his wife Lubov They have adopted Dima, his older sister Daryna, 17, and his younger sister Nastyaof 10 years.
“My grandchildren had to stay with me, right here. “I couldn’t let this family be separated,” he says, adding that otherwise the children could end up in orphanages.
Although Valeriy admits that taking care of his grandchildren is not always easy, he highlights the support and family unity in this difficult time: “Dima helps on the plot taking care of the pigs, Daryna learned to cook and Nastya is very attentive and kind.”
A village of orphans
Fourteen children from the village lost at least one of their parents in the attack and eight of them lost both. In all cases, the grandparents or other relatives decided to take care of the minors so that they would not be sent to orphanages.
Most residents are still traumatized by what happened.
“I will never forget the funerals when these children were there, silent and alone, holding hands,” Diana Nosova, who lives in the area, tells me. “My heart was broken.”
After the attack, some orphans decided to move to a safer area, including 14-year-old Vlad.
He went to live in western Ukraine with his aunt after his mother, grandfather, uncle and eight-year-old cousin were killed.
“I miss you so much,” he tells his grandmother Valentyna in a video call. “Me too,” she replies.
Valentyna decided to stay in the village despite losing most of her family in the attack, including her husband, daughter, son and grandson.
I take a walk with this 57-year-old woman through the village where she has lived all her life and where things are very different now.
“This is a very scary place,” he tells me as we pass the destroyed building where the missile hit.
“You know your children were lying here on the ground. Your death is here”, the Mint.
And he adds: “the more time passes, the worse I feel. I have no one. Almost no one survived.”
Valentyna says she takes comfort from her pets: two dogs and a cat named Stephan.
He explains that his priority now is Vlad; He wants him to receive a good education. He calls him frequently and has paid for extracurricular computer classes. But the most important thing for her is that he is safe and she is glad that he is no longer in the Kharkiv region.
No peace in sight
Kharkiv has barely had a respite since the war began in February 2022.
The region, including Hroza, was captured by Russian forces at the beginning of the invasion, and Ukraine recovered it after a great counteroffensive in September 2022.
However, as fighting continues, the area is often targeted by Russian drone, bomb and missile attacks.
Ukraine’s security service suspects that two former Ukrainian citizens who defected to the Russian side informed the army about the planned wake in Hroza.
The BBC has not been able to verify this information, but Ukrainians have been convicted on other occasions for giving information to Russia, usually in territories close to the front line that had been occupied by Moscow.
Back at Dima’s house, his older sister has hung photographs on the wall of her deceased relatives.
As they try to rebuild their lives, their grandfather Valeriy remains positive, stating that “everything is fine.”
This may be an illusion, since the end of the war is not near and Russia is amassing more troops in the nearby city of Kupyansk.
In any case, Valeriy insists on his optimism: “if I see that my grandchildren are well, that they are smiling, I feel relieved,” he alleges.
“As long as you are alive, you must have hope.”
With additional reporting by Dmytro Vlasov and Helen Devlin
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